Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Field Note
“The day was so beautiful and the children's faces so expres-
sive I could hardly believe I was visiting an AIDS hospice
village set up for children. The Sparrow Rainbow Village on
the edges of Johannesburg, South Africa, is the product of
an internationally funded effort to provide children with
HIV/AIDS the opportunity to live in a clean, safe environ-
ment. Playing with the children brought home the fragility
of human life and the extraordinary impacts of a modern
plague that has spread relentlessly across signifi cant parts
of Subsaharan Africa.”
Figure 2.23
Johannesburg, South Africa.
© Alexander B. Murphy.
HOW DO GOVERNMENTS AFFECT
POPULATION CHANGE?
Over the past century, many of the world's govern-
ments have instituted policies designed to infl uence the
overall growth rate or ethnic ratios within the popula-
tion. Certain policies directly affect the birth rate via laws
ranging from subsidized abortions to forced sterilization.
Others infl uence family size through taxation or subven-
tion. These policies fall into three groups: expansive,
eugenic, and restrictive.
The former Soviet Union and China under Mao
Zedong led other communist societies in
expansive
Study Figure 2.19, the infant mortality rate (IMR) by state in
the United States. Hypothesize why the IMR is low in some
regions of the country and high in others. Shift scales in your
mind, and take one state and choose one state to consider:
how do you think IMR varies within this state? What other
factors are involved at this scale and this level of general-
ization to explain the pattern of IMRs? Use the population
Internet sites listed at the end of this chapter to determine
whether your hypotheses are correct.
